Originally Posted by
garykung
That's not true.
Sure - I can give you that Mint is the best premium TCON product. But you seem to forget that for international markets, lounge access is also a part of the hard product as well. Yes - AA Flagship/UA Polaris, even BA lounges at JFK are not as great as most people think. But JetBlue has practically nothing.
You may believe that lounge is not that important. FWIW - when NH introduced SJC-NRT service, one of the stipulations was SJC must have a lounge (i.e. the Club @ SJC). So how can JetBlue compete without a lounge?
I don't really consider the lounge part of the hard product, I would classify that as the ground experience. How can JetBlue compete without a lounge? Easy, price. B6 can already undercut most competitors on price while remaining profitable. What is a lounge worth on the fare? $100? $200 (doubtful)? We've seen this work very well with Mint in the premium transcon market to the point where B6 is now commanding a premium over competitors on some routes, even without a lounge. There is nothing to indicate the same isn't possible on short TATL flights like JFK/BOS-LHR.
With that said, I would be nice to see B6 roll out some sort of "Mint Lounge" or something like that at JFK, LAX, and LHR. It would also be great to have an arrivals lounge option.
Originally Posted by
garykung
As I have said - international markets work differently than TCON. Just because it has the best TCON, it does not mean the best international product.
Beside - keep in mind, pretty much everyone sucks for NYC-LHR anyway.
That's the point. The competition just isn't really a lot better, and has far higher costs. They're not going up against, QR, EK, or SQ. It's BA with their miserable Club World product (at least until the get the new one rolled out in any kind of volume), DL's 767 product which isn't great, and AA J which is probably the best hard product at the moment (assuming you don't end up in a Concept D seat), but soft product is terrible. No airline really has a very good product on this route at all.